


Triste, Triste

by Saint_Katyusha



Category: Left 4 Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, lmao im sorry Ro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 05:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11730717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saint_Katyusha/pseuds/Saint_Katyusha
Summary: Everyone wants to survive, but no one wants to be the last survivor.





	Triste, Triste

_In the space between love and sleep_  
_when heart mourns in its prison_  
_eyes against shoulder keep_  
_their blood-black curtains tight._  
_Body rolls back like a stone, and risen_  
_spirit walks to Easter light;_

Opening her eyes to tentative dawn – soft, pink sky – Rochelle shivers, draws her knees in. She sits in silence, listening for any possible danger outside the car. No one in sight. Nothing in sight. She looks out through the cracked windshield; no birds in the sky. Turns back to peer through the back window at the rest of the cars abandoned on the road. Apart from a rotten and greying corpse draped over the hood of a blue Mazda – nothing. Opening the door and stepping out of the car, Rochelle aches to feel warm wind on her face but the air is still. Stagnant. She can't feel the temperature of it, it's like being in purgatory. It's like being in a place where you can't feel anything, where nothing ever changes. She places her hand on the revolver tucked into her belt. Takes her hand away. Takes her backpack from inside the car and places the gun inside. Retrieves the baseball bat that had rolled under the front seat. After softly closing the car door, Rochelle begins to walk. 

_away from its tomb of bone,_  
_away from the guardian tents_  
_of eyesight, walking alone_  
_to unbearable light with angelic_  
_gestures. The fallen instruments_  
_of its passion lie in the relic_

She counts her steps as she walks along the row of haphazardly parked cars. It's something to do. It's something to occupy her mind. To subdue her racing thoughts. One, two, three, four, five. Begins counting her steps by two. Seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen. Rochelle briefly thinks about what Coach said about motivation, how it's all you need to succeed. All you need. Nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-five. She forms a perfect and beautiful cartoon cloud in her mind with the word 'survive' written inside. It's an unsteady image, falling away in the face of experience. It's what they all wanted, but it didn't help. She tries to conjure it up again, an image of going home, of not being afraid. The thought is slippery, harder and harder to hold on to with each passing day. Rochelle tries to hold on to it with a rising desperation. Motivation is all you need to succeed. Maybe that only works on kids about to engage in a game of soccer. She thinks about the kids that Coach used to teach. Wonders what happened to them. Are they alive ? Are they safe ? Are they buried in shallow graves like-- 

A noise catches her attention. She stops walking, crouches down. Raises the bat in front of her, gripping it in both hands. The noise – an uneven clanging – is coming from her left, from a structure made of metal barrels and pieces of wood assembled together by the side of the road as some sort of barricade. Rochelle moves to hide behind a car, still gripping the bat, beads of sweat forming on her face. The further from the town she went the less infected she saw, and it was not physically difficult to dispatch stray individuals along the long stretch of the motorway. It was never easy, however. It never got easier. Rochelle watched the structure, speculating that whatever it was, it was on the other side of the makeshift wall. A brief, almost hysterical image flashed through her mind; Ellis stepping out from behind the barrels, waving to her, saying something like 'gotcha'. She imagines an animal jumping out behind the barrels, a large white rabbit. She imagines it hopping down the road, her following behind like Alice, headed to some other place, headed through the shimmering fabric of the world into another reality. Dread slowly creeps through her limbs and settles in the pit of her stomach. Wonderland. Is that where the dead are ? Are they all there, behind the curtain ? Slowly, Rochelle rises and walks towards the structure. The noise gets louder. She walks alongside it until she reaches the edge. Peers behind. About a hundred meters away from her one of the nightmarish things is laying on the ground, its legs missing, its fists banging on the metal barrel in front of it. The thing must have sensed her coming as she walked down the road. As Rochelle came closer the infected turned its head and wailed, swinging its arms towards her, wriggling on the ground. Rochelle backed away, even though the thing was not succeeding in making any progress towards her. She backed further and further away until she was at the edge of the barricade again, where she turned back towards the road and ran. The bat was still gripped tightly in her shaking hands. The sun had completely risen. 

_darkness of sleep and love._  
_And heart from its prison cries_  
_to the spirit walking above:_  
_'I was with you in agony._  
_Remember your promise of paradise,'_  
_and hammers and hammers, 'remember me.'_

Like the intimate knowledge of an incoming panic attack, Rochelle knows that there is nothing she can do to stop her racing thoughts. There is nothing she can do to stop imagining what it would be like to die. She sits on a hill overlooking a motel, watching several infected shuffle about inside its courtyard. Tries thinking of the best way to proceed, a way to bypass without being seen. The muscles in her legs ache. She feels a tension within her, like a rubber band stretched too tight. She clears her throat, She hasn't said a thing aloud in days. Rochelle wants to image having a conversation with someone. She wonders whether she will ever have a conversation with anyone ever again. A memory of the last thing she said to another human being bobs just beneath the surface of her mind, visible, but unreachable. Whatever it was, was that her last human interaction ? She vaguely remembers talking to Nick about something as they all passed through a town, several weeks ago. She remembers his face but not his words. Rochelle speaks out loud for the first time in days. 'Not that'. A memory passes through her mind of him tossing her a water bottle. 'Not that'. The hot sensation of tears pushes at the back of her eyes. 'Don't', she gently says to herself, quietly. Like the intimate knowledge of an incoming panic attack, Rochelle knows that there is nothing she can do now to stop the tears. She wants to cry loudly, to scream, but knows that it's one of the luxuries she has lost. She breathes deep, looking out towards a copse of oak trees at the far end of the courtyard. A bird passes over them. A warm wind picks up.

**Author's Note:**

> uhh making up these depresso scenarios for l4d2 is a specialty of mine. i picked rochelle because in the end, i feel like she is the one with the will to actually survive a situation like that. the ending is meant to be somewhat positive. i... believe in you, ro :'^) 
> 
> the poem throughout is 'triste, triste' by gwen harwood.


End file.
